Valley Business Keynote (#VBKeynote) was an incredible event this year with a focus on living your life on purpose, doing what you love, and loving others in your life.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2V5limsQU?rel=0]
Valley Business Keynote is an annual event that facilitates engaging ideas for local leaders to help fulfill the Valley’s vast potential. This year’s event featured Mark Fernandes, Chief Leadership Officer with the Luck Companies in Goochland, VA. He discussed how leaders should impact others in a positive way through igniting their potential. He said that leaders have to be intentional about their actions in order to set the culture they want – in every word spoken and action executed.
“Life is about choices, the culture of your business is a shadow of the leader.”
Mark says that leaders need to get up each day and think about how to build the environment they want in their company. Not only how they act and what they say, but how the company acts as a whole to make positive meaning in the lives of others. Mark told us that he believes everyone has a mission in life that they, given the right opportunities, will fulfill. As a leader it is your job to build the right environment to provide those opportunities for everyone encountered to fulfill the potential they have inside of them.
Three big rules to follow to be a great leader:
1. Love your associates with all your heart
2. Give them something to believe in
3. Obsess about their future
I believe we all struggle finding out voices, trusting our hearts, and fulfilling our potential. The encouragement that Mark shared with 400+ people in the room to “have the life you want by being present in the life you have” was a powerful message. If we took it to heart and extended grace to each other just imagine the beauty we would find in our valley! I am looking forward to seeing these ideas grow and spread throughout the valley and to next year’s #VBKeynote.
